names may be unknown
outside of our offices, but the great planets are perceptibly influenced
in their courses by little asteroids invisible to the naked eye, and
many a celebrity who appears daily in large type is moved by the strings
we pull, and knows it not. My comrade Tarbox says: "The oracles that
became dumb in the year of our Lord were really a necessity to mankind,
and consequently were made vocal again by the agency of Renaudot, who
invented newspapers. The Delphis and Dodonas of the nineteenth century
are newspaper offices." This may explain why young men in search of a
profitable career write to us instead of applying to rich merchants or
to dashing brokers. How fortunate that those who consult us never see
the shrine or the priests! No gold or silver glitters in the modern
_adytum_, or editor's room, and the tripod from which we distribute our
_afflatus_ to the compositors is a wooden three-legged stool, unpainted
and uncushioned. That great oracle, Tarbox himself, was not long ago a
noble savage who ran wild in the woods near some country college. Caught
and caged in that institution, he devoted three years to pipes, and one
to _belles lettres_, and receiving from a good-natured Faculty some sort
of a degree, probably that of tobacco-laureate, came thence to town;
where, inspired by a salary of ten dollars a week, he enlightens the
public on finance and politics, art and literature, manners and taste,
and writes those brilliant articles the world willingly lets die. When
the California gold mines were first discovered, a clever fellow said
that he knew of no opening for a young man like the Southwest Pass. That
is still true for rough, coarse, self-asserting characters; but for
delicate, refined, stay-at-home natures, who have wishes without wills,
there are many ways of getting their porridge without selling their
birthright of doing as little as possible. If they cannot float
buoyantly on the surface, at least they need not sink far beneath it,
but may enjoy a quiet, water-logged kind of existence, not devoid of
comfort.

REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.

_May-Day and other Pieces._ By RALPH WALDO EMERSON. Boston:
Ticknor and Fields.

We wonder whether those who take up Mr. Emerson's poem now, amid the
glories of the fading summer, are not giving the poet a fairer audience
than those who hurried to hear his song in the presence of the May he
celebrates. As long as spring was here, he ha